Quixotic I dont really compare him to many centers because he's playing out of position since we already had a stat padder in his normal position. I'm comparing him to other forwards. Still as a scoring option he ranks right up there behind some of the best centers.

Okay, okay, you need to get the stat padder argument out of your system. Too much bitter QQ. Also, why would you compare him to bigs for points and then say to compare him to SFs for points? I assume you mean SF because if you meant PF, Bargnani is still one of the worst rebounders per minute at that position. Get that part straight, then make an argument.

And as for what tbthis said, I'm a big proponent of the unorthodox -- Bargnani doesn't have to rebound well just because he's 7 feet tall. But when his defensive position is as a 4 or 5 (no, he's too slow to guard most NBA 3s not named Turkoglu), that means you typically have one less starting spot for a 4/5 who CAN rebound, so you need your 1s, 2s or 3s to pick up the slack in the rebounding department.

Pizzaman wrote:

Also the neuroscience comment says what? that you are smarter...give me a break!! You're entitled to your views as I am mine, but don't imply I'm inferior in intillect to you or Timmy. I know what he was saying [...]

No, it means it wasn't hard to understand, and if you did understand what was being said, why did you bother regurgitating everything he said, only re-worded?

Whatever I'm tired of arguing and I'm starting to soften up. Hell I was in such a crappy mood for a pile of reasons then I saw this, and I even turned down the wife. Screw it this is not that important to get worked up about. Let's see what actually happens in the next few weeks and then argue and complain. One thing for sure I have no freakin idea what to do without my basketball fix. I hate that the playoffs are over.

Rarely, if ever, does a team's second-leading rebounder average more than 7-8 RPG. OK, Bargnani gets 6.2, but it really isn't that bad. Only 34 players (approx. 1 per team) in the entire league average 7 RPG or more, so it's extremely unlikely that 2 out of those 34 will be on any given team. Bosh is an excellent rebounder at 6th overall which makes it even harder for Bargnani to break the top 34 (7 RPG).

Sorry if that was a bit hard to follow, but I'm not sure how you can dispute it... Andrea Bargnani is no worse than an average rebounder, certainly not terrible. Get off his back already.

One thing for sure I have no freakin idea what to do without my basketball fix. I hate that the playoffs are over.

Play NBA 2K10. I've been surreptitiously developing my many young'uns -- so many, in fact, that I have no choice but to send Weems back to the D-League. Don't ask me how I managed to get Wall/Rubio, Favors, Avery Bradley, Damion James, Larry Sanders, Gerald Wallace and Rudy Fernandez all on the same team, with Bargnani as the centerpiece. =P Too bad fantasy and real life are two very different things.

What are you even trying to say? To take it easy on Bargnani because he really only does a couple things decent to well? He's a very bad rebounder. That's just the way it is. He hurts the team on the glass just being out there. It doesn't matter if he was a PG or a C. His motor and drive for the ball are atrocious, his defensive awareness is poor, and his scoring isn't quite good enough to overcompensate. He is an average NBA player at best.

what im trying to say is, if the Raps are set on rebuilding around Bargs if Bosh leaves, then get players around him that will compliment his strengths. We all know that he is not a rebounder, so get a fucking big who can rebound. Like it or not, Bargs is a rarity, a 7 footer who can be a nightmare on matchups coz he can shoot from the outside and slash on the next play. I think its unfair to judge him based on his past years because it was fairly obvious that the focal point of the offense has been Bosh. For 4 years Calderon has been taking the ball down and passing it to Bosh. I think if Bosh leaves, and Bargs gets the brunt of the offense, then we can judge him if he turns out to be a dud, but you cant say the guy is "average" at best when his whole career in the NBA has been based on being #2, specially #2 to a guy who basically plays the same position.

Brasky wrote:

His motor and drive for the ball are atrocious, his defensive awareness is poor, and his scoring isn't quite good enough to overcompensate. He is an average NBA player at best.

wow, i think you were watching POB not bargs. go to youtube and search andrea bargnani highlights.

I would never try to acquire Rubio until he is actually in the NBA and I certainly wouldn't trade our second best player for him when he could just decide he likes Europe better. I wouldn't mind a trade for the fourth pick and someone else, or if we could trade bargs and the 13th for Love and the fourth, that would be good.

The problem is that once Rubio comes to the NBA, he may become untouchable. If he is truly is as good as I believe he is, once he starts playing the NBA, Minnesota will demand a lot more than Bargnani for him.

And while Bargnani may be the Raptors second best player, that says more about the level of talent on the Raptors than how good he is. Beyond Bosh, the Raptors have no one that is All-Star calibre, so gambling on a guy like Rubio is a risk worth taking.

And as for what tbthis said, I'm a big proponent of the unorthodox -- Bargnani doesn't have to rebound well just because he's 7 feet tall. But when his defensive position is as a 4 or 5 (no, he's too slow to guard most NBA 3s not named Turkoglu), that means you typically have one less starting spot for a 4/5 who CAN rebound, so you need your 1s, 2s or 3s to pick up the slack in the rebounding department.

this is exactly what ive been saying, IF the Raps decide to rebuild around Bargs, they should accept the fact the he is an "average" rebounder and get him a big and SF who can rebound. The mistake they did with Bosh is they drafted Bargnani and tried to turn him into something that WOULD compliment Bosh, when they should have gotten somebody who DOES compliment Bosh in the 1st place.

Take for example the Celtics. they pretty much compliment each other, rondo used to be a poor jumpshooter, so they took ray allen. KG wasnt that much of a low post presence defensively so they put Perkins beside him.

those were the games, old man.
last time i checked, highlights are taken from games.

and i do watch the games, thats why i know Bargs is capable.
and thats why he's still a Raptor because Colangelo and the coaching staff know he's good, and i think they watch the games too.
oh and thats why they offered him a contract extension, because they watch his games and know he is good.

or maybe we are all wrong. coz YOU, seem to think he's atrocious.

i might be wrong. Colangelo might be wrong too. The coaching staff might be wrong too.

I don't like Bargnani so I'm all for trading him, especially if that means we get to keep Bosh. But even if Bosh goes, I still won't put my money on Bargnani to "build around." The guy doesn't have the right attitude, and not a lot of basketball IQ (IMO). He'd be a great back up, but that's it. If people say Bosh isn't the right guy to build around, then damn hell neither is Bargnani. How about building a team that complements each other rather than just one player.

I'd do any of those proposed trades in a heartbeat, specially the Rubio one. But I honestly don't think Minny will bite on any of those.

Rarely, if ever, does a team's second-leading rebounder average more than 7-8 RPG. OK, Bargnani gets 6.2, but it really isn't that bad. Only 34 players (approx. 1 per team) in the entire league average 7 RPG or more, so it's extremely unlikely that 2 out of those 34 will be on any given team. Bosh is an excellent rebounder at 6th overall which makes it even harder for Bargnani to break the top 34 (7 RPG).

Sorry if that was a bit hard to follow, but I'm not sure how you can dispute it... Andrea Bargnani is no worse than an average rebounder, certainly not terrible. Get off his back already.

Hard for it to be "once and for all" when it's just wrong. Sorry, dude. =/

First of all, I counted 46 players with 7.0 or higher rebounds per game. If you go all the way down to Bargnani, he's tied for 63rd with Brand and Hawes, both of whom averaged fewer minutes so let's just tiebreak it and say he's 65th. Absolute numbers are also misleading, since he did average almost 35 minutes a game. If we go by defensive rebounding rate (I unfortunately don't have the defensive rebounds/48 numbers handy in a sortable list), we have the following:

I kept in more data than necessary in case people want to recalculate the numbers if they disagree with my choices for Top-2 pairings. These are all the players with at least 15.5% in defensive rebounding rate (20 game minimum, 20 mpg minimum). I picked the Top-2 when possible in the total at the end of each team listing (for instance, Camby and Kaman pre-trade, or Jamison and Haywood), but did a rough averaging when the numbers were not as clear (Aldridge and an average of Przybilla/Camby/Oden, or Durant and an average of Collison/Krstic) and indicated such with a "~".

From just a cursory glance, you can see that despite having the 14th best defensive rebounder in the league, Toronto comes in 5th last in terms of Top-2s, thus indicating your understatement of the number of teams with good rebounding pairs. The only teams worse (in order from 4th last to last) are Sacremento, Phoenix, New Jersey and Oklahoma City. Oddly, both Sacremento and Oklahoma City were middle of the pack when the rest of the team was included.

The actual worse defensive rebounding teams (7th last to last) were Atlanta, Washington, Denver, New York, New Jersey, Phoenix and Golden State, with Toronto at 8th last. Atlanta, Denver and NY had worse defensive rebounding than Toronto outside of the Top-2. Golden State was hurt by Biedrin's injury and having their top five minutes played being all guards. Either way, Toronto was in the bottom third of the league in this category, and it's clear Bargnani was a big part of it.

As I have said, I like Bargnani, but being blind and being a Bargnani supporter are not necessarily synonymous. I accept that he is a poor rebounder and have moved on, but to delude yourself into thinking he's an average rebounder (average compared to whom? all nba players yes, all PFs/Cs no) is just silly when he is clearly near the very bottom.

this is exactly what ive been saying, IF the Raps decide to rebuild around Bargs, they should accept the fact the he is an "average" rebounder and get him a big and SF who can rebound. The mistake they did with Bosh is they drafted Bargnani and tried to turn him into something that WOULD compliment Bosh, when they should have gotten somebody who DOES compliment Bosh in the 1st place.

/agree then.

Orlando, Oklahoma City and Phoenix are close to what we would need to be successful (though who knows about success in the playoffs). Howard and rest of team make up for Rashard Lewis playing out of position; Oklahoma City manages just fine despite very poor rebounding combo in Krstic/Green; and I have no clue about Phoenix except for: Steve Nash.

Question, hypothetically this trade goes down, Bosh leaves for sure and now the raps have no big men. I'm very sold on Rubio and the small list of point guards i'd rather have him over would upset a lot of people, but I don't know how I feel about jettisoning both our twin towers, no matter how faulty they may be.

Also, can BC use his Euro clout and Cheneyesque right hand man Maurizio to get Rubio over here next year? That would be the big selling point because for those of you who unaware of Rubio's once in a generation skill set, he is a direct descendant of the European James Naismith who invented and then perfected the alley oop. The dizzying array of oops to Derozan, Weems and Johnson would be worth the price of admission no matter the final score.

Rarely, if ever, does a team's second-leading rebounder average more than 7-8 RPG. OK, Bargnani gets 6.2, but it really isn't that bad. Only 34 players (approx. 1 per team) in the entire league average 7 RPG or more, so it's extremely unlikely that 2 out of those 34 will be on any given team. Bosh is an excellent rebounder at 6th overall which makes it even harder for Bargnani to break the top 34 (7 RPG).

Sorry if that was a bit hard to follow, but I'm not sure how you can dispute it... Andrea Bargnani is no worse than an average rebounder, certainly not terrible. Get off his back already.

Of the 16 teams that made the playoffs, Boston, Utah, Denver, Portland, Cleveland, Chicago, the Lakers, Atlanta and Dallas had at least two players averaging more than 7 rpg.

Of the 7 teams that did not, Oklahoma City, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Miami, Charlotte, Orlando and San Antonio had either their starting center or PF position platooned between two players and neither one played 30 mpg. At least one of those players, if not both, averaged at least 7 rpg per 36 minutes.

So of the 16 teams that made the playoffs, every single team had two starting front court players average at least 7 rpg per 36 minutes.

Bargnani, per 36 minutes, averaged lower than any other starting center or PF among every single playoff team.

Anyone who says that rebounding is overrated has absolutely no idea what they are talking about. And anyone who says that Bargnani is anything but a terrible rebounder has absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Bargnani IS a terrible rebounder. He rebounds at a similar rate to small forwards who he is, at least, 4 or 5 inches taller than. How can ANYONE deny that is simply terrible?

There is a reason that the teams who had half decent rebounding starting front courts made the playoffs. The Raptors are at a disadvantage with Bargnani on the court because he is constantly outrebounded by his counterparts.

Raptor4Ever I assume yu mean Timmy is a hater, or maybe you for all the hate you put on a 7 footer who never played center before the Raptors turned him into one without much help I might say, playing third fiddle at best behind stat padder, Jose, and last year even the useless Turk, and still managed 17 and 6 leading the team in blocks, and the teams best man defender. Maybe if they got the kid a coach he could do other stuff. I don't hate, I am simply sick of seeing the Bosh show. How about a guy who has been the centerpiece for four years, been here for 7 and cannot lead this team anywhere but down...oh I forgot he still got his 20 and 10 though. Personally I bet evry Raptor player is praying for Bsh to go so this team can try to find an identity as a team versus the Bosh plus 4 gang.

rap of the day. i totally agree with this, most raptors fans do too. this year we will have a real TEAM , not a prima dona in overrated bosh